


the future's out to get you

by professorcockblock



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-15
Updated: 2013-09-15
Packaged: 2017-12-26 16:12:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/967966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/professorcockblock/pseuds/professorcockblock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A story about how Ray is as dense as a fucking neutron star and fails to recognise all the signs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the future's out to get you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> Unbeta-ed. Written over the course of much too long for someone I like much too much. I'm not a natural writer so this has destroyed me to write. I regret everything and nothing. It's confusing.

 

When Ray was 11 his mom really did take him to NASCAR. His dad had promised more times than you could shake a limp dick at, but surprise surprise never actually did. Whatever. His mom took him and bought him a hot dog and hollered profanities at the racers like she was born to do it, which Ray thought was not outside the realm of possibility. They watched the cars scream around the track, exhausts billowing, bright and dirty tin cans bricking it around the cheap shitty concrete oval. Everybody on the stands was praying for a crash, they all knew it even it most of them didn’t say it. A collision, a fireball, metal meets glass meets the six o’clock news. You know, just something to make the trip into a proper story.  
Ray stood there, climbing onto his seat for a better view of the action, staring down at the cars moving below him, and wondered what it would feel like to be in that. He wanted to be down in the pit, breathing burning rubber and acrid smoke, feeling the ground shudder and the air break. He wanted to feel the speed of machinery and know that there was something bigger than a shitty trailer park on the most obscure corner of buttfuck goddamn nowhere.

He was 15 before he realized he didn’t really give a crap about NASCAR. He just wanted to get out.

He was 18 when he joined the corps.

*

The way that Brad Colbert strokes the bonnet of the Humvee when he thinks no one is looking is the way most sane men stroke their dicks. That fucking piece of shit Humvee, the one that’s going to get them all killed and still have their cramped up legs giving them crap in the afterlife, Brad thinks it’s his baby. He doesn’t say this, not in as many words, but Ray has definitely heard him refer to it as a she at least twice, and when they were told to abandon it just outside _ Brad ignored the order. He just stared daggers as Poke yelled about how they were all going to die because of Brad’s raging boner for his pimped out scrapheap turd. Or something like that. Ray tries to only pay attention to every third word Espera actually says because the bits in between tend to be some dark ass bullshit about how the white man rubs one out every night planning how next best to pillage and extort the good hard working peoples of wherever. The point is that Brad is attached to their Humvee in a way that goes above and beyond the call of duty and into the realms of certifiably asscrack creepy.

They’re camping out at an airfield, the one they took for the British paratroopers that never actually arrived, tea-felating royalist dicksucks that they are. Ray’s taken the opportunity to remove his boots for the first time in days, wiggling his toes like a kid. It’s good to know they’re all there and accounted for. Comforting, really. Brad is pulling down one of the camie nets when he turns to Ray with a face like, well, with a completely impassive face actually, but Ray knows him well enough to tell the difference between hey-aren’t-puppies-cute impassive and someone-is-going-to-die-painfully impassive. This would be the later.

‘The fuck is that smell?’

‘My manly musk, homes. Don’t be hatin’ on the gifts that god gave me.’

‘The Humvee smells like shit.’ He’s staring at Ray like this is an interrogation. It probably is. Ray leans back against the supply satchel behind him and raises his eyebrows.

‘Humvee always smells like shit, Brad. There are five sweaty ballsacks attached to five dumbass grunts rubbing up in there all day. Martha fucking Stewart hasn’t come up with a solution to MOPP suit stank yet. I’m sure she’s working on it.’

Brad’s expression narrows minutely from someone-is-going-to-die-painfully impassive to I-will-destroy-everything-you-hold-dear-if-you-don’t-stop-talking-shit-you-retard-hick impassive, which all things considered is a bit of a constant around Ray, so he’s not that worried. Brad turns back to the Humvee, routing around for the source of the smell, muttering about choking Trombley to death with charms as he finds two packets of them wedged down the side of the seat, when he stops suddenly.

‘No. No no no no no. NO.’

Ray cranes his head to see what Brad is seeing, but all ten zillion foot of him is right in the way. ‘What? What the hell is it?’ he asks, the prospect of getting up and having to put his boots back on being a totally unenticing one. Brad doesn’t answer though so he does it anyway, walking up next to him, standing by the open door at the back of the Humvee and following Brad’s line of sight with his eyes.

Objectively speaking, it’s kind of impressive. There’s floor and floor and floor and then, well, there it is. Vast. Imposing. Majestic. He can’t help himself, he really can’t, he bursts out into laughter. Brad is still just staring at it, eyes wild, expression gone from impassive to deadly, but Ray is howling, clutching his stomach and wheezing to breathe.

‘Walt! Walt! Walter fuckass pussybitch Hasser! Get your ass over here! Trombley took a shit in the fucking Humvee!’

Walt and Poke appear from somewhere around Poke’s own camp, looking at Ray like they think he’s probably bullshitting, which, okay, would normally be a pretty fair assessment. As they walk up towards the crime scene Ray is practically hopping with glee. He grabs Walt by the shoulders and hauls him to the open door to witness the scene laid out before them, putting his head on Walt’s shoulder to peer in behind him. Poke lets out a low whistle and slaps a hand to Brad’s back.

‘I know the babies are still young but it might be time to show them the litter box, dog. They don’t teach shitting in BTS anymore? That’s why these scrawny ass bookfuck white boys all fall out the Marine Corps womb still in diapers. They teach Trombley how to kill but he still don’t know how to shit.’

Brad doesn’t say anything.

‘How do you know it was Trombley?’ Walt asks, turning his head slightly to look at Ray. With Ray’s chin still on his shoulder, Walt’s face is approximately 0.0000003 cm from his own. Well, okay, so maybe Ray’s rounding down, but still. Shut up.

‘Because I’m too ladylike and you’re a precious sunshine child that shits nothing but unicorns and puppy dog cuddles.’ Ray punctuates his point by darting a tongue out to lick along Walt’s jaw. Walt makes a vaguely disgusted noise in the back of his throat but shows no actual intent to move Ray off him. Ray grins and continues, ‘I guess it could have been the Scribe, crapping in cars is how liberals plan to power transport in the future, after burning the bodies of all us babykillers and devil worshippers runs out.’ He lifts his head slightly to call out, ‘Reporter! Reporter! Hey, Re-’

‘Jesus, Person, I’m right here! And I didn’t shit in the Humvee.’

Ray turns and sure enough there he is, maybe 10 steps behind where he and Walt are plastered together. He’s got his notebook out and he’s penning like a madman. Suddenly Ray feels too hot, too aware of the Reporter’s eyes on him, Walt is too close. He pushes himself off Walt’s back with a hand on the small of his spine and takes a step away from the Humvee. Walt turns and shoots him a look that’s maybe perplexed, but Ray is already shifting his attention, forcing his mind onto solid ground.

‘LILF on your three, Brad.’

Brad breaks his staring contest with the floor of the Humvee and glances up to his right, then at Ray.

‘Please tell me that LILF does not stand for Lieutenant I’d Like To-’

‘Fick.’

Brad scowls, but the corner of his mouth twitches ever so slightly, and Ray congratulates himself for breaking the Iceman front.

‘What’s going on?’ Nate asks as he approaches, and it’s only then that Ray realizes that this many of them standing, staring pointedly like this, probably constitutes a small crowd.

Brad looks over at him for a second and Ray recognises the quiet question mark there. Despite what people will tell you, Ray does actually understand the value of non-verbal communication; he shrugs almost imperceptibly and Brad turns back to Nate. The split second exchange goes largely unnoticed and isn’t so much Brad looking for an opinion as it is him letting Ray give it anyway. That’s marriage, kids.

‘Sir, not to offend your delicate Ivy League sensibilities, but the slack-jawed loose-anused incest lovechild we call Trombley appears to have defecated in my Victor.’

Nate raises an eyebrow, whatever he’d been expecting it hadn’t been that.

Just then, from somewhere behind Ray comes the sound of footsteps and the crinkling of an MRE packet, and the group’s eyes all narrow in. Trombley comes to a stop by the Humvee, chewing on a corner of pop tart, taking in the sombre stares. He looks at Brad and swallows.

‘Sergeant?’

A muscle in Brad’s jaw twitches.

‘Private Tombley it appears that you may have left something in my Humvee.’

Trombley walks over to the open door and peers inside, reemerging a moment later, face slack with alarm. He stares around at them again, wide eyes darting back and forth between Brad, Nate, the rest of them, and back to Brad.

Ray can tell without looking that Walt has a hand in front of his mouth, trying to hide the laughter threatening to escape, and elbows him softly in the side. He gets a well-aimed kick in the ankle for his trouble and supresses a grin.

‘Sergeant, I…’ Trombley is looking at Brad like this has got to be a joke, ‘I thought I was dreaming, Sir.’

That does it. Poke lets out a howl and bends over with choking laughter, Walt turns to Ray and puts his head on his shoulder, shaking against Ray’s upper arm. Even Reporter clearly think it’s the dumbest thing he’s ever heard, he’s chuckling even as he scribbles into his notebook. Nate’s not laughing, not quite, he’s still in his Lieutenant Fick mode, meaning he’s schooling his face into detached observation, meaning he’s watching Brad from the corner of his eye. Brad is totally stony, so Ray can tell that in his head he’s strangling Trombley to death with his own bloody entrails.

Poke wheezes out a few more chuckled breaths  and slaps a hand to Reporter’s shoulder to drag himself to standing straight again before addressing Trombley, ‘Dog, you thought you dreamed that you dumped your skinny white colon out in the back of the Humvee? And at what point did you fail to recognise reality, motherfucker?’ He laughs again.

The thing is they’re all crazy on lack of sleep and a diet of nothing, nothing, and something that might once have pretended to be jalapeño cheese.  He’d never say it, but Ray silently thinks this probably could have happened to any of them. It didn’t though, it happened to Trombley.

‘Don’t hate on our baby, Espera, it’s not his fault. James has had so much business going up his gaping asshole it’s a miracle anything manages to get out at all.’

‘Shut the fuck up, you’re fuckin’ disgusting.’

Ray should drop it, but he’s pretty annoyed that their ride is going to smell like a festival toilet all the way to Bagdad, so he keeps needling. ‘Oh, hey, easy boy, the Trombley doth protest a little too fucking much, I think.’

‘I’m not a fucking fudgepacker, Person. Fuck you.’

Ray rolls his eyes, but he can tell Trombley’s attitude is changing the atmosphere from funny to uncomfortable. Walt tenses minutely at his side and Nate continues to gauge Brad for a reaction. A reaction that is, apparently, to give Ray a warning look that clearly means 'Shut the fuck up'. Ray’s pissed because like fuck is it his fault that Trombley is a homophobic little shit. He should stop, he should, but he doesn’t.

‘Trombley, just because nobody wants to stick their dick in your worn out cum bucket of a shit shoot, doesn’t mean you’re not gagging for my monster cock. You wish you could get it, honey buns.’

Trombley snarls and curls his lip, ‘Yeah because if there’s a faggot in 2-1 it’s really going to be me isn’t it, Person.’

‘Enough!’ Nate cuts in sharply before Ray can even open his mouth to demand what the fuck that’s supposed to mean. He’d almost forgotten the LT was there. Shit. ‘Trombley, read the fuck up on DADT, I hear one more piece of crap like that come out of your mouth and you and I have problem. Person, stop fucking goading him for Christ's sake. Men are dying out here. Pull yourselves the fuck together.’

Nate goes to leave, Brad looks at Trombley and says ‘I want my fucking Humvee smelling like roses by the time I get back,’ before turning and following Nate away.

Poke is still smiling when he turns to Ray and says, with a wink, ‘Careful dog, you keep crossing mom and dad like that and next time you might even get a spanking.’

Ray is about to throw his canteen at Poke’s head but Walt gets there first.

*

Brad is a fag. Ray figures it out around the time they’ve all decided they might just make it out of this messed up haji farm of a country alive. Brad brings out this satchel that Ray’s never seen before, which is kind of a miracle given that Ray has packed and repacked that goddamn Humvee more times than he’d care to think about. But he brings out this satchel, opens it up and there’s ravioli, Chef fucking Boyardee. ‘Just like momma used to make’ Ray says.  And there’s porn. Actual honest to God, Allah and Vishnu pornography. Ray makes a lunge for it, he knows how this shit goes down and he ain’t taking the crusty remains once everyone else has had their turn. This long away from civilisation, even Reporter is even making grabby hands. But Brad slaps them away and marks his territory in this voice about eight tones higher than normal. He talks about the chick on the cover in way that is so not Brad that Ray nearly laughs. It’s not like that’s definitive though, maybe Brad's just covering an unfortunate erectile dysfunction problem or something. It could happen. So Ray forgets it and makes some comments about the voluptuous Jasmine that cause Walt to side eye him with this unreadable expression that makes him shift in his seat. Fucking Walt. He’s probably pissed that he didn’t get first dibs, which is his own dumbass fault for not saying anything. That’s what happens when you’re raised in Virginia, you come out all soft and squishy. Not that Walt is soft and squishy, Ray figures he’s probably the most cut guy in 2-1, after Garza. Maybe Brad too, but Walt has these broad shoulders and strong arms that the Iceman just can’t replicate, which Ray suspects probably makes him crazy envious because, jesus, those are some fucking nice arms. At any event, Walt doesn’t grab for the Jugz so clearly there’s some issues there.

No, what really tips it for Ray is Lt. Fick. See Brad and Nate have always has this weird intensity, like everyone is kind of just background noise to their eyefucking, and everything they say to each other has like twelve different meanings. Ray has no time for that shit, why not just say the twelve different meanings and let the chips fall wherever they fucking please? But this is the military and Brad’s a steely Viking bitch and the LT is stalwart and noble and all that wholesome Gryffindor bullshit, so they settle for staring sweet nothings into each other’s eyes. This too hasn’t really been definitive until the night of the ravioli. See, after the food and light relief of still all being alive this far into the invasion dies down and most of the platoon decides to catch up on the thousand hour sleep debt they’ve been owed, Ray feels it’s probably time to do something he hasn’t been able to achieve other than functionally for weeks. Rolling out of his ranger grave and padding off to find a quiet place to squat down and empty his bowels with the full amount of time and freedom that god intended, he doesn’t see anyone at all, at least not walking or talking. It’s not until he’s sighing and thanking god’s small graces for combat craps that he look over to see Nate Fick pinning his fave NCO to the passenger door of the Humvee with one strong arm against his chest and the other flat palmed on the truck behind his head. Ray pulls his pants up, cursing the inevitable betrayal of circumstances allowing a man to get a decent goddamn shit for once.

Nate’s not the kind of guy to get all up and aggressive on someone that doesn’t have it coming, but Brad is his golden boy. Fuck, Brad is everyone’s golden boy. Ray should probably just go back to his grave and snuggle down onto his soft mattress of packed dirt and fluffy pillow of packed dirt and squishy duvet of , yeah you guessed it, packed dirt. But he has no idea what Brad could have done to set the LT off like this, and something in the way he’s holding himself makes him stay. The Iceman has his back flat against the Humvee, arms down by his sides, like he’s forcing himself to keep them there, while Nate holds his body still against the cool metal. Brad could break out of this if he wanted to, that’s obvious, but he doesn’t. The LT is talking low and deliberately, too quietly for Ray to hear from this distance, but whatever he says makes Brad’s fingers twitch like his entire body is an itch desperate to be scratched. Ray wonders again what insubordinate craptart retard spiel Brad must have been mouthing off to make the LT lose his shit, but that’s when Brad leans in, whispers something into Nate’s ear, and for a second it looks like they both stop breathing. Brad’s fingers stop dancing. The LT closes his eyes and swallows into the darkness. He tips his head up to meet Brad’s hard eyes, and Ray can’t make out his expression but whatever Brad sees there Ray can tell the moment is gone. Nate begins to move away and for half a minute Brad just stands there, transfixed, but then he’s calling out into the darkness,

‘Sir-’

‘Go to sleep, Sergeant. 25% watch.’

‘Nate’

Nate keeps walking, shoulders a hard line against the sky. Brad watches after him as he goes, and Ray realizes that in about ten paces Nate is going to be close enough to spot him watching, and for whatever reason that seems like an incredibly bad potential turn of events. He ducks behind a berm to his right, feeling kind of ridiculous hiding from his LT, but then he’s gone and Ray steps out, and Brad hasn’t moved from the side of the Humvee. Ray sidles over to him and pulls himself up to sit on the bonnet of the truck.

‘S’up, homes.’

‘Get off my Humvee. And go to sleep, Person.’ It’s a strange echo of Nate’s order, and Ray begins to formulate a theory that command is just a whackjob system of making people unconscious when you don’t want to talk to them. He decides that’s probably what this whole war is really, and if someone just told all the Iraqis to go take a fucking powernap they wouldn’t have to blow them the fuck to pieces.

‘I’m serious, Ray.’ Ray ignores him, he’s not serious. He’s just pissy at having been interrupted in the middle of his post-LT boner faggoty angst time. Ray decides not to voice this out loud.

Instead he takes out his KA-BAR and starts flicking some of the dried lumps of sand from the last shamal off his boots. It’s more than a little pointless, they’ll be fucked again the second the wind picks up, but for some backwards ass country boy reason Hasser does it all the time, and it’s kind of comforting to think of Walt when he’s out here in the darkness not quite knowing  what he just saw or what to say now.

‘Why did your fiancé leave you?’ It’s not what he meant to ask and he’s not quite sure where it came from, but now it’s out he figures he should probably own it, so he adds, ‘I mean apart from your asschin and flaccid donkeydick and the high probability that you’re a serial killer.’

‘I might be if you keep talking about my dick, you cross-eyed inbred son of a cockslut.’ Brad mutters, but there’s no real heat. More than anything he sounds tired, resigned. He stares out at the trees and stars, the desert land their haji fuck enemies call home, but are too lazy or retarded to put a swimming pool or two in. ‘Women leave, Ray. It’s what they do.’

‘Oh, homes, you don’t have to tell me, Momma Person acts like they invented TiVo for the sole purpose of recording more Dr Phil than there are hours in the day.’

‘That explains a lot.’

Ray grins at that, but he can tell Brad’s not done. He waits, still scraping at the sand on his boots, picturing Walt’s capable hands holding his the knife so delicately, fighting his own silent battle against the sand in a world of little else. There’s a war going on and Walt’s worried about the upkeep of his footwear. Dumbass fucked up hick.  
Ray keeps scraping.

Brad’s been quiet too long, Ray looks over at him and finds him staring down at his own hands, like some soccer scholarship suburban teenager that’s just had their first ever toke of something strong and can’t quite believe they’ve never really stared at their hands before, as if they’re discovering their own limbs for the very first time. For the record Ray was never like that, he sucked it in, loving the burn, and held the smoke in his lungs till his eyes watered. He didn’t talk a lot for the next few hours after that. He didn’t like it much. Kids are idiots. Retarded midgets with too much free time. The problem with young people these da-

‘Jesus Christ, Ray, stop thinking. It hurts to watch.’

Ray looks up, Brad’s hands are back down at his sides but his eyes still look pretty far away. Ray is about to retort, but he’s cut off before he’s begun.

‘I used to think she left because of the corps. I was away a lot. He wasn’t.’ He turns to Ray and grins a grin that is nearly but not quite a grimace. ‘Stability.’ He says, like it’s funny.

‘And now?’

Brad looks him straight on, and the grin is gone. For the first time since he’s sat here Ray stops picking at his boots. Brad looks at him right in the eye, and it’s almost a challenge. Ray thinks of Nate, of Brad’s twitching hand, of the look on his face as Nate walked away, and he realizes that it was a stupid question to ask. He feels like an asshole for being here, for having watched them.  
He feels a surge of words climbs to his throat but pushes them back down as he realizes what they would mean. He hates not being able to say anything. He really fucking hates it.

Brad is still staring at him, gauging his reaction, willing him to do, god, Ray doesn’t even know what. Something though. Anything. He realizes that this is Brad’s version of a confession, that they’re in the middle of an invasion and his sergeant is telling him that he likes dick. He knows what a risk it is, even now, even when it’s nothing more than a look and an understanding, and damn if that doesn’t choke Ray up like a little goddamn bitch. Fuck. He shakes himself internally. Nut the fuck up, marine.

He punches Brad on the shoulder, hard, and hopes he understands. Maybe he does and maybe he doesn’t, but either way he punches back, and they half walk half wrestle back to their ranger graves in silence.

*

The thing is that Brad and Nate think they’re special, but the newsflash of the day is that homoeroticism ain’t actually all that hard to come by in the corps. Yeah yeah, what a shocking revelation to all. But truth be told, even Ray has his moments. Don’t tell anyone, but he had a dream once that Walt took him to Virginia to meet his folks. In the dream Walt’s mom looked like Jessica Simpson and his dad looked like Barney Rubble, but Ray was just glad they didn’t seem to hate him for turning up to their house in a nothing but his Batman underpants. That’s dream logic for ya. The parents dissolved pretty soon anyway, leaving him alone with Walt and this huge turkey dinner that Jessica Hasser-nee-Simpson had cooked for them, but Walt kind of just swiped that off the table, pinned Ray down on to it and bit at his neck and chest until he was harder than eighth grade geometry. With one hand gripping Ray’s wrists above his head and the other sneaking fingertips under his boxers, Walt’s mouth felt like it was everywhere at once. His lips ghosted along Ray’s chest, pausing to tease a nipple with the very tip of his tongue before skating down, burning a trail with his mouth and teeth. Squeezing Ray’s wrists in a silent command to keep them in place, Walt let go and brought both hands round and underneath him to grasp at his ass, nipping at his hip bone even as Ray bit back the kind of sound that badass marines definitely did not make in front of other sentient beings. Licking his way along the sharp muscle leading down towards Ray’s groin, Walt’s eyes suddenly flashed up to meet his, gleaming with a smug intent that made Ray let out a huff of laughter and mutter under his breath that Walt was an asshole and a pretty mouthed cocktease. Still smiling, Walt pulled at Ray’s boxers with his teeth, letting them ping back against his skin in retaliation. ‘Ray, for once in your life just shut up and behave,’ he said before teasing his tongue underneath the elastic of Ray’s underwear, soothing the reddening mark. If he was amused at Ray’s choice of superhero shorts he didn’t show it, but then again, Ray reasoned, Barney Rubble hadn’t complained about it, and he was Walt’s dad, so it was probably cool.

When he woke up, sticky down his legs from coming all over his pants like a horny fucking teenager, the first thing he thought was that it was weird he had let Walt fuck him when Jessica Simpson had been there. The second thing he thought was that at least it hadn’t been Barney Rubble. The third thing was that Walt Hasser had a fucking mouth on him and it was a crying shame to be wasting it out fighting pajama clad terrorists in the ass end of the world when even in his sleep Ray could apparently think of at least eight other good uses for it. The fourth thing Ray thought might have been important but it got cut off by the LT coming to rouse them all to be Oscar Mike in 10.

So you see Brad and Nate aren’t the only ones getting their panties in a twist. But it’s the marines, that’s how it works. The only difference is that Ray isn’t a faggot.

*

It’s not the way people think, being Ray. You talk enough, and everyone thinks they know you. That suits Ray just fine because he doesn’t really care what people think, just so long as they don’t think too much, don’t dig too deep. He talks and talks and sometimes they listen and mostly they don’t, but the end result is generally the same; they think they have him all worked out.

Walt doesn’t do that, and Ray doesn’t know why. It’s like he hears everything Ray’s not saying. He never pushes, never forces it, never makes Ray admit what he’s doing, but sometimes after Ray goes on a rant about pussy or a tirade on liberalism or an attack on the Marine Corps generals, he sees Walt looking at him with this ridiculously open expression that reads like he knows Ray is kind of burning. It should make him want to punch Walt, it really should. Mostly it just makes him want to run and run and never look back.

*

In between the mortar shells and Sesame Street of retarded fuck-up cartoon character officers, there’s not a lot of time for contemplation. Ray’s been rationing Ripped Fuel since _ and the realization that he might not get to Baghdad on his reserves, but once they reach the blossoming utopia of the capital city, his thoughts start to catch up with him and he blows out the last of the stash in a bid to outrun them. So long as he can keep talking, he doesn’t have to be thinking. That’s why when the crash comes, it hits him like a freight train of broken glass dildos.

Ray watches daytime TV, he know that the first step to overcoming addiction is admitting that you have a solution. Just, you know, not a very good one. He admits to himself that maybe uppers weren't the answers to his prayers after he’s been down about a day, around the same time as the world turns night vision green. He’s pretty sure his vision is supposed to turn red if he really wants to fit the cliche, but Ray’s never really been one for the well beaten path. He hears Brad in the back of his head, and it’s so stupid, because it’s just an echo of a memory and he knows it, yet the second he hears 'They’re in the trees' in the recesses of his brain, he’s suddenly aware that he’s not holding a gun. None of them are holding guns. They’re running around like assholes, playing the sports he hated in high school, and nobody seems to have noticed that people are dead, people are dying and they killed them, Ray killed them. With his eyes still seeing NV green, his ears start to roar unbearably, and he can’t breathe, he really fucking can't breathe. He needs to fix this, needs fuck up, needs to burn, he needs to blow this whole county to hell, with him inside it. Fuck fuck fuck, he isn't making any sense. Fuck. He needs to destroy something, be destroyed, he needs to fucking breathe. The game is still going on and Ray doesn't understand why. He lets go of his last vestiges of self restraint and launches himself at Rudy. Buried deep somewhere underneath the desire to burn and hurt and fuck and fight and kill, a little voice tells him, ‘Well this was dumb’. And like, yeah, gee, thanks voice of fucking reason, go back to your fucking vacation, asshole. Ray is 15 again and he's losing himself to a fight he can’t win with a man he suddenly hates with every fibre of his being, and relief comes flooding in.

It isn't till Brad airlifts him out of there like a good team leader, that the world comes back into focus. He thinks this is probably what the homicide defendants on Ally McBeal are talking about when they plead temporary insanity. Great, finally his dream of being a Law and Order guest star can come true, if only he has the balls to kill someone. He snorts out loud at his own private joke and Brad doesn't even look around, just keeps frog marching him away from the game. He has so many things he could say right now competing to get out, but he can’t organise his thoughts into sentences, and he’s pretty sure that communicating by grunting caveman vowels only works for babies and handsome, heavy browed European dudes.

Brad deposits Ray in the backseat of their Humvee, like he’s being Supernannied on to the naughty step. He’s still pretty fucking detached, but he’s reasonably sure that Brad is steeling himself to say something angry or important or cliche. Whatever. Let the butthurt Viking sing if he wants to, Ray just doesn’t even fucking care right now.

Instead Brad turns his head to the sound of footsteps. Walt doesn’t even let him speak before he tells Brad that the LT is looking for him urgently.

Brad turns back to Ray, 'Doesn’t matter, he can give me 5.'

Walt takes a few steps to stand between him and Ray. 'Brad,' Walt’s voice has lost all it’s soft edges, and is grating in a way that Ray’s never heard before.

Brad’s face is hard stone, but he looks past Walt to Ray, assessing. Ray makes eye contact just long enough to nod minutely, and then Brad’s muttering something to Walt, too low for Ray to hear, and turning to leave.

Walt is breathing a little shakily when he clambers into the back seat of the Humvee with Ray, and it’s only then  that he really processes that Corporal Hasser just basically told Sergeant Colbert to fuck off, and he’s still alive. Fucking Virginia gypsy magic.

What happens next is a lot of nothing, really. They sit quietly for a long time. It’s not quite silence because the sound of them breathing together fills the truck, and Ray can tell they’re both listening to it. Once or twice he hears Walt swallow, the hot sun making his throat dry in the unconditioned heap of scrap metal they call home. They might as well be driving a fucking Prius into war, at least then they might get some liberal tree-hugging pussy. Either way, every time Walt swallows, it sends a shiver down Ray’s spine and straight to his junk. The third time it happens, Ray’s pretty sure he’s doing it on purpose. The fourth time, he knows he is. He rubs the heel of his palm into his crotch to try to relieve some of the tension there and when he looks up Walt has his canteen in his hands. Ray watches him lift it to his lips, and then he must have really fucking lost it, because the way the sweat beads on the bobbing hollow of Walt’s throat is probably the hottest thing he’s seen since they left the US. He’s a gentleman though, so he waits till Walt’s finished to tell him that he’s a fucking asshole.

Walt turns to him, beaming the most shit-eating grin that Ray’s ever seen. He licks the last drops of water off his lips with a darting tongue, because apparently he’s just a fucking dicktease whore like that, and asks, ‘What I do?’

Ray can’t do much more than let out a strangled noise of frustration and flump back into his seat, glaring at the one in front. He starts kicking it, partly in an effort to get the blood flow away from his dick, and mostly just because he hopes it makes him look moody and unaffected and not turned on. Fuck you.

After a moment, Walt stills his legs with a hand on each knee, and Ray stops kicking. ‘Ray,’ he says quietly, and for a one syllable name it’s really remarkable how much can be conveyed. He doesn't really want to hear it. His head is too busy swarming with thoughts to answer, and half of him might still be back in the football game, fucked up and so fucking angry, so he just keeps glaring at the back of the seat. Apparently this isn’t the answer Walt is looking for, because he lifts one of his hands to Ray’s jaw, and pulls his head around to look him in the eyes. ‘Come back, Ray.’

He says it so softly that Ray could have missed it, but it echoes through his body like he’s hollow all the way through, and it's a fucked surprise to realize that there’s actually nowhere else he’d rather be than here with Walt fucking Hasser, but it’s not that simple. He closes his eyes and lets the air out through his nostrils, and tries to stay present. His body burns and his thoughts are mutilated messes and sometimes all he can hear is gunfire and amtracs, all he wants is to escape, to outrun this. But Walt’s hand is heavy on his knee, the other still holding the the side of his face, and Ray opens his eyes and hears himself say, ‘I’m here.’

They sit like that, too close in each others space, for a long while, and eventually Ray’s heart stops hammering and he starts to feel a little more like himself again.

When he next sees Brad, he makes sure to get as much saliva on his tongue as possible before on obnoxiously licking him up the length his whole face, just to make sure he knows everything is cool. Ish. For now. Whatever.

*

The semi-predictable plot twist here is that after Iraq, Ray doesn’t think about Walt any less than he did on tour. It could be PTSD, if he believed in that kind of psychobabble crap. It’s not like Walt’s the only thing, Ray thinks about Brad and Trombley too, thinks about Reporter, and the Humvee, Ranger Graves and Mark-19’s. He thinks about MRE’s all the time. The first time he has real peanut butter after he gets home, he eats so much he throws up, the irony being that his civilian peanut butter vomit would still probably taste better than the stuff they package up and ship out to the military. But either way Walt is on his mind. A lot.

He has more dreams like the one where Jessica Simpson made dinner and Walt swore in all the colours of the rainbow as he came all over Ray’s chest. If he’s honest they’re not really dreams because he’s not really asleep. If he’s honest they’re what he thinks about when he lays on top of his itchy sheets in the predawn light, unable to sleep, and pulls himself roughly to climax. He could probably take more time with that now he has the luxuries of privacy and space, but somehow it always ends up frantic. With the scratch of the harsh sheets on his back and his eyes tightly closed against the soft Missouri light, he thinks of Walt’s hands, and bucks as he remembers strong fingers and harsh callouses. The noise turns up in his head like a speaker set playing sounds all overlapping each other; explosions, guns, the roar of the LAV’s as they passed, radio static, Walt breathing, Walt gasping, Walt begging to be fucked, Walt growling out Ray’s name, Walt’s hands everywhere, Walt’s tongue in his mouth, Walt's mouth between his legs, Walt’s dick, Walt, just Walt, Walt, fuck yes, fuck, just like that, Walt, you look so fucking good, god don’t stop, don’t ever fucking stop, shit, fuck, Walt, Walt, Walt-

And then it’s all over. He’s spent and fucked out and irrationally angry that Walt isn’t there with him. It’s not like he wants to cuddle, it’s just that he could think of worse things than tangling his legs with Hasser’s and stroking soft circles onto his waist until his breathing evened out and became snuffly snores. Yeah. That be nice.

Oh, fuck off, fuck you.

No.

That pussybitch Bella Swan puppy dog ass crap is not what he wants. It’s not, okay? It’s fucking not so you can just shut the fuck up right now.

The other semi-predictable plot twist is that Ray might just be a bigger queer than Colbert.

He reaches for his phone.

*

‘It’s 3am, stop calling me.’

‘I wouldn’t have to keep calling if you’d just pick up.’

‘I’ve picked up. Now I’m hanging up. Stop calling.’

‘I think I’m having a personal crisis.’

On the other end of the phone, Brad sighs heavily. ‘The operative word there is personal.’

‘That’s just rude. If you were having a crisis I would offer you soup and make you a mix-tape and sing sweet Missouri lullabies down the phone to you while you cried.’

‘My desire to hear the traditional songs of the great inbred nation of assfuck Hicksville has never been lesser. Go away, Ray.’

He doesn’t want to go there, but Brad is really forcing his arm.

‘How’s Nate?’

There’s a long moment in which Brad manages to convey more violence in his silence than most nations do with an army, and Ray wonders if he knows any ways to kill him with his brain. Probably not, he’d have never even made out of Peddleton.

‘How’s Hasser?’ Brad counters eventually, as if deciding it’s almost not worth threatening him. He probably doesn’t expect an answer, Ray realizes, but he gives one anyway because at this point he’s in so deep he doesn’t really know what else to do.

‘I don’t know. Handsy. At least in my head.’

Another pause.

‘Is this your crisis?’

‘No, my crisis is about which is my favourite of the Teen Mom girls. Cause you know Farrah works real hard, but Catelynn understands the importance NASCAR. It’s a toughie. But oh hey, just as an afterthought, I think I’m going to die if Walt Hasser doesn’t let me suck his dick immediately and then cuddle me afterwards and gee does that seem a little out of the ordinary to you?’

‘Stop watching Teen Mom, it’s melting the 12 brain cells I’ve been assured that you do in fact possess.’

‘That’s it? Are you serious right now?’

‘What do you want me to say? Congratufuckinglations, Person. Remember to walk on the outside of him and always use a condom.’

‘Is that what the LT does to protect your honour?’

His answer is the dial tone, he decides to take it as the Iceman equivalent of a blessing.

He stares up at the ceiling for 6 minutes and 26 seconds. He knows, he counted. Then he rolls over onto his side and picks up his phone again.

Walt answers on the third ring.

*

‘Ray?’

‘S’up homes, thought you might be missing me. Decided to treat you’

‘Yeah, I’m pining for you’

‘Too right, motherfucker’

Walt doesn’t even sound groggy. Tired, maybe, but not like he’s been sleeping. Ray wonders what’s keeping him up. He doesn’t ask.

They’re silent for a moment and Ray realizes he hadn’t exactly planned this far ahead, he’d just wanted to hear Walt’s voice.

‘How’s the civilian life? Sick of real pop tarts yet?’ Walt asks.

‘Dude, I could never be sick of pop tarts, those toaster pastries have got me through more hard times than Oprah.’

‘You know your tv choices are on a downward spiral, you’ll be burning me Glee CD’s any fuckin’ day now.’

‘There goes my best Christmas present idea.’ Ray doesn’t want to think about the possibility that Walt won’t be in the country for Christmas, that he’ll be in a blood bath desert somewhere swapping MRE’s for gun lube and singing Bing Crosby to himself.  
Apparently the thought hasn’t totally passed Walt by either because through the crackle of static Ray hears him hold his breath for a second. It’s not much, but Ray’s a recon marine, and he’s not stupid. He says the first thing that comes in to his head to change the subject, ‘Come stay with me.’ Oh, well. Shit. Okay.

‘What?’

‘Yeah, come stay. Missouri in the fall, dude, really brings out the yellow of the cornfields and desperation of the whiskey tango trailer parks.’

There’s a pause before Walt replies, but Ray can hear the smile in his voice when he speaks, ‘Sure, okay. Next week good?’

No, next week is terrible, how is Ray supposed to shit himself and cure his sudden abundant homosexuality by next week? Next week is awful. Next week is no-can-do.

‘Next week is great!’ Ray literally hates his traitorous vocal chords. Other people have a better relationship between brain and speech, he’s sure of it. ‘It’ll be awesome, homes. We can stay up late and braid each other’s hair and talk about boys.’ In his head Ray is stabbing himself in the face with a rusty screwdriver.

‘Sounds just like Iraq,’ Walt says dryly.

‘Except no Brad, no Trombley, no liberal dicksuck reporter types. Just you and me, baby. We can finally work out some of that sexual tension that’s been driving us so crazy.’

‘Sure, Ray.’

‘Oh puppy, you can’t pretend like you haven’t missed me, I know your game, Hasser. You’re all choirboy innocence and sunshine child charm until the eyes are off you, then it’s all hands down your MOPP suit and 'Oh Ray! Ray, baby! Harder, faster, unf unf unf!'’

Walt laughs. It’s a good sound, Ray wants to bottle it up and keep it for rainy days.

‘Go get some fuckin’ sleep, you retard. I’ll be there on Tuesday.’

‘Counting down the days, honeybun’

‘Goodnight, Ray’

‘Night, Walt’

*

The following morning Ray wakes up an hour before his alarm and is too restless to go back to sleep.  He drags on a pair of battered sneakers, his USMC t-shirt from BTS, and a bottle of water, and goes for a run. With the wind cold at his back and sweat heating his face, he likes not having to think about anything other than the steady rhythm of placing one foot in front of the other. By the time he stops to break he’s run 8 miles into the middle of nowhere and the sun has come up enough to shine dappled patterns between the trees. He sits on the grass and drinks half the water down in greedy gulps, pouring the rest over his head and chest, letting his breath come out in pants.

He thinks about Walt. Walt in Missouri, Walt in his apartment, Walt in his life. It was probably stupid to tell him to visit, Ray probably cares way too much. He doesn’t know when that happened or how it got so bad without him noticing, but apparently it has, and now he doesn’t know how to talk his way out of wanting this so much. He knows he should call, tell Walt not to come, tell him to stay at home or go visit Brad or Garza or Poke or, well, fucking anyone that doesn’t spend all evening thinking about his ass and all morning thinking about how much fun it would be to eat breakfast and watch shitty daytime tv together. He should stop this before it gets any worse, but he knows he won’t. He wants it too much. Self-destruction 101 with Joshua Ray Person, sit yourselves down kids and learn a thing or two.

He picks himself back up with up with a hand braced on each knee and starts toward home, sprinting hard enough to make his lungs burn and legs scream.

*

Ray picks Walt up from the airport. He’s had the time in his head since Thursday, repeating it over and over again like a mantra. He makes a mental note to ask Rudy if this is his dharma.  
When he gets to the airport, Walt’s flight is delayed by 22 minutes. It shouldn’t matter, but his mantra kind of falls apart when he reads that arrivals board. He tries to start a new one, a new pattern with a new time to keep his brain occupied, keep his thoughts from straying or turning on him, but it doesn’t work.  
He spends some of the extra time distracting himself at an airport newsstand, reading about which Olsen twin wore this tacky scarf pin better, and doing a quiz to see if he has the right winter wardrobe for his body shape. Apparently not, but that could be because he spends a lot of time deciding which body shape he has; it’s hard because most of them seemed to be types of fruit. When he asks the girl at the register if she thinks he’s more of an apple or a banana, she tells him he’s been loitering too long and has to leave. Whatever, she’s just jealous because she’s some kind of fucking kumkwat or something.  
After that he just goes to the domestic arrivals gate and fidgets for the remaining time. He’s probably working himself up, he realizes, after looking at his watch for the fourth time that minute, but without being too overdramatic, he kind of maybe sort of thinks his whole life and the future of his happiness and the fate of the free world might rest on this moment. Okay well maybe not that last one, but definitely the first two.

About two minutes after the plane has landed, Ray realizes that it probably says a lot about his particular brand of crazy that he’s been obsessing about seeing Walt for weeks, but has still not managed to get much further plan-wise than ‘wing it’. As the first overeager passengers from Walt’s flight start appearing through the gate, he realizes he doesn’t have a whole lot of time to remedy this. He settles for amending the current mission statement  to ‘wing it suavely’, and congratulates himself on a tactical plan well devised.

Walt arrives in Missouri the way One Direction arrived on Ray’s ipod; with an overplayed song and a feeling that he is very probably definitely super fucking gay. The second Hasser’s face shows up turning the corner, khaki backpack slung across one shoulder and hair just this side of unruly, Ray’s stomach does some fucking Cirque du Soleil style acrobatics, and his master plan of ‘wing it suavely’ loses the essential new element. Before he knows what he’s doing, Ray is bursting into song and running at Walt. If he’s honest with himself, he thinks vaguely as he opens his mouth to start yelling, it was always going to go this way.

'BABY YOU LIGHT UP MY WORLD LIKE NOBODY ELSE, THE WAY THAT YOU FLIP YOU H-'

That’s as far as he gets before he reaches Walt and tackles him to the floor. Realizing he’s lost musical ground and a certain amount of grace, he cuts his losses and bellows at the top of his considerable lungs, 'YOU DON’T KNOOOOOOOW, YOU DON’T KNOW YOU’RE BEAUTIFUL! THAT’S WHAT MAKES YOU BEAUTIFUUUUUUUUL!'

In hindsight, perhaps running and screaming and tackling another man in front of airport security was not the best way to greet Walt, but really, it was just a bit of Britpop, the escort from the building seemed like overkill to Ray. Thank you, Lambert St Louis Airport for making ‘wing it’ seem almost like a bad plan. Rude. Ray blames 9/11.

*

The car ride back to Ray’s, mostly Walt just lets him talk, listens to him babble out his nervous energy and smiles almost the whole way home. Ray should probably let him get a word in edgewise, but that seems less important right now than filling all the gaps between them with noise. Noise is comfortable and manageable and familiar. It’s not until they’re standing in his hallway and Walt is dropping his bag down on Ray’s floor, that Ray really stops.

Walt smiles, slow and easy, crinkling the corners of his eyes. ‘Hey,’ he says.

‘Hey,’ Ray echoes, feeling a little off balance now that he’s stopped word vomiting. The hall is small and there’s barely a foot between them. ‘You, ah, want some coffee?’

‘Is it better than the stuff we drank in Kuwait?’

‘Not much, but I’ll put it in a mug with a kitten on it, just because you’re pretty.’

Walt wrinkles his nose, ‘I really hope you’re joking.’

‘You know that I’m not.’ Ray smiles as he turns towards the kitchen. Walt only sighs as he trails behind.

*

They spend most of the morning drinking shitty coffee and watching Dukes of Hazzard reruns, Ray rests his feet on Walt’s lap and Walt absent mindedly draws shapes on his bare ankles with the tips of his fingers, and Ray is happier than he can remember ever being. He feels like he’s on the edge of something big, and he’s not really okay, but he’s happy. He could probably make it as a country singer if he could only get these messed-up conflicting teenage girl feelings to rhyme.

*

It’s dark outside before Ray realizes that, oh yeah, eating is a thing that people do. He’s been surviving mostly on cheetos and coffee since he got back, but now that Walt’s here, he has a reason to dig out some of the less obviously artificially coloured items in his cupboards and actually make something a human would eat. It ends up being spaghetti bolognaise, because that was the food his mom always made when he brought a girl home, so he figures it's romantic. 3 minutes in he realizes his mom is a sneaky cockblock because bolognaise is definitely not seductive, and Walt laughs at his inability to twirl the pasta around the fork, shaking his head when Ray inevitably ends up sucking it up one piece at a time and getting sauce everywhere. He leans over to wipe some off Ray's eyebrow and then kinda fails to move back, so Ray takes the opportunity to wriggle himself in closer to Walt's chest. Walt hums in a noncommital way that Ray chooses to interpret as contentment, and it's fucking _nice_. He didn't think he ever wanted "nice", but this? This feels whole.

*

Like all things involving Italian food and what probably amounts to cuddling, it's too good to last. Walt lifts Ray off to go to the bathroom and Ray manages to maintain his pleasant fuzzy reverie for all of 18 seconds before his mind starts hurtling; did he flush his last crap successfully or was it a persistent floater? What if Walt gets lost and finds himself in Ray's bedroom and what if he's left porn out and, fuck, anything could be there. Walt is walking around his flat and fucking anything could happen. Jesus, what the shit possessed him to let this situation happen.

He dives for his phone and tactically retreats to the kitchen.

*

‘He’s here.’

‘What?’

‘Walt. Walt is here. He’s touching all my things with his damn folksy hands.’

‘Okay… Tell him I say hi.’

‘I don’t think you’re really getting the fucking point here, Bradley.’

‘In my defence, I’m trying extremely hard not to.’

‘Tough!’ Brad is no fucking help at all. ‘Lookit homes, having recently come to the conclusion that I am 100% totally and irreparably homofuckingsexual faggot gay for Walt’s ass, it’s pretty fucking inconvenient to have said ass parading around my house. It’s a problem. I am calling you with this problem. Be useful, Devil Dog.’

‘This is shaping up to be a very disturbing conversation.’

‘Brad!’

‘Fine, fuck. Just go and fucking do something about it. Stop calling me to bitch like a little lovesick preteen prolapse. Ask him to go to prom with you already, you lost fucking cause.’

*

Ray is still staring daggers at the phone when it rings in his hand.

‘What.’

‘Apparently I’m failing to fulfil my duties as your keeper and I should feel bad. I don’t, just for the record. But I’m told that I should.’

‘Brad?’

‘No, Sadam.’

‘You’re calling me to apologise?’ Ray’s mostly just shocked.

‘No.’

‘Yes you are.’

‘No, I’m not, you ignoramus hillbilly fuck.’

He totally is, which is so un-Brad that it takes Ray a second to work out what’s happened. ‘Jesus Christ. Brad, did Lieutenant Boytoy send you back to me to make nice? That is some dominatrix level whipped you have plunged in to there, my vagina toting former friend. What happened to your warrior spirit, homes?’

‘I don’t know if you think I can’t kill you from here, or that I won’t, but either way you’re living in a false sense of security.’

‘Do you want to get matching friendship bracelets or should we jump straight to BFF tattoos?’

‘The bracelet would be more convenient to strangle you with.’

‘Rude. Be magnanimous, Iceman.’

Ray hears Brad cover the receiver with his hand and his muffled voice on the other side of the line yelling something about this being a waste of his fucking time. A second voice, lower and calmer comes in to ear shot, but the only words Ray can make out are ‘friend’, ‘responsibility’, then something low and deliberate and obviously slutty as fuck about ‘reward’. Jesus Christ, when the fuck did the officer ranks of the US Marines become such domestically operating whores? But Ray figures LT’s probably goading Brad in to making good on their Sisterhood Of The Travelling Homosexual Crises and stop Ray from freaking the fuck out about Walt, so he’s not complaining.

‘Ray, much as it pains me to say it - and it really, really does pain me to say it - it would probably be a not all together terrible idea for you to-‘

‘Hit that?’

‘Yes. Hit that.’ Brad sounds like every word is costing him actual physical pain. ‘Then, or even before, tell it about your trailer park, Taylor Swift, homo-pathetic, panty wetting sunshine and unicorn feelings for and towards it.’

‘Wait, you know who Taylor Swift is?’

‘Know the enemy.’

Like fuck. ‘Sure, Brad. Sure.’

‘Will you go away now?’

‘So you can get some?’

‘So I can get some.’ Brad allows, and it’s the closest thing that Rays ever heard to him actually admitting his disgustingly domestic romance novel set-up out loud. Go figure.

‘Gross.’

‘Goodbye, Ray.’

‘Do good sex, Odinson.’

‘Always do, shit for brains.’

*

‘Who is doing good sex now?’

Ray turns sharply against the kitchen counter he’d been leaning on to see Walt resting on the door frame looking amused.

‘Our commander in arms was crying about the teardrops on his guitar because LT has him pussywhipped without even being in possession of a pussy. Bradley is emasculated, it’s a very trying time for him. I just wanted to be there in a supportive role to help him through this tender period before his gender reassignment.’

‘You could have just said Brad, you know.’

‘And ruin the opportunity to cast doubt upon his character? Homes, it’s like you don’t know me at all.’

Walt grins and rolls his eyes, ‘I should be so lucky.’

‘Puppy, you wound me,’ Rays says, clutching a hand to his heart in horror. ‘You’d be lost without me and you know it.’

‘Mmmm,’ Walt hums, ducking his head in thought, and it’s not the response Ray expected. He’s quiet for a moment, then, ‘Do you ever wonder what it would’ve been like if I’d never swapped teams? If Garza had been your gunner?’

‘No,’ Ray replies, and it’s true. The thought has pretty much never occurred to him. Now that it has he doesn’t care for it much.

‘I think about it sometimes.’ Walt’s voice is thin, and Ray doesn’t really know why they’re suddenly talking about this.

‘Garza’s fine, but when I’m half a klick from certain death, I’d rather a retard farmboy corn baby on my six. Unhealthy lack of self-preservation, I guess.’

‘Why?’ Walt frowns.

Ray shrugs like the answer doesn’t matter, because it does. ‘You could have gone back to Poke. Why’d you stay with me?’ Us, he meant us. Team 1. Brad, Trombley, Reporter. Crap.

‘Didn’t feel right without you.’

He expects Walt to still be staring at his feet when he looks over, lost in some post-traumatic reverie or whatever, but he’s not. He’s looking straight at Ray like this conversation might be an admission of something. Ray feels itchy and restless under Walt’s gaze, and he turns back around and starts making coffee.

He’s just about to launch into some bullcrap about caffeine being the opiate of the masses, at this point mostly operating on autopilot more than anything else, but before he’s aware of how it happened there’s a hand either side of him, flat on the countertop where he’s measuring out the coffee. He can feel Walt right behind him, his skin prickles with it. Walt says his name, quiet, low, a breath against the back of Ray’s neck. Ray puts the coffee down and stills. ‘Ray,’ Walt says again, hot in to his ear, and Ray can’t help it, he lets his head fall back an inch, turning slightly towards Walt.

‘What are you doing here, Hasser?’ It comes out harder than he meant, and when did this whole Walt thing stop fluttering and start burning anyway? His heart is thrumming against his rib cage like it’s trying to get out, to escape.

Walt moves a hand to Ray’s waist and presses in against him, the length of his body hard angles against Ray’s back. Ray lets his eyes fall closed and the air in his lungs stream slowly out of his nostrils. He’s panicking just a little.

‘I wanted to see you, you fucking idiot,’ Walt hums, and something in the small jibe reminds Ray that this is just Walt, just the two of them, the way it’s always been. Walt’s thumb is rubbing soft circles in to his waist, and if Ray was a lesser man he might call it comforting. Fuck, Ray doesn’t know when he became the kind of soft delicate soul that needs comforting whilst being manhandled by the 6ft pin-up farm hick he’s been having wet dreams about since Operation Iraqi Clusterfuck, but it kind of puts him back on balance anyway, so he lets himself have this pussybitch indiscretion. Walt’s mouth is back against his ear and Ray leans in to his every word, letting himself marvel at the way Walt’s lips flutter on the shell of it. ‘You’re dumb. You take too long to realize what you want and you’re dumb.’ He bites gently on the lobe of Ray’s ear and Ray only just manages not to choke on his own tongue.

He’s a little bit terrified, but fucked if he’s going to let that stop him. He’s kind of done with skirting, with fucking around in his own head and pretending it matters less than it does. He turns round in the cage Walt has surrounded him in and Walt, the fucking sunshine asshole that he is, is smiling. Not even like a dirty smirk, just an honest god, holier-than-thou smile, like Christmas has been put forward this year and he’s only just found out. Ray’s finding it really distracting being this close to it, so he grasps for words instead. Yeah, words are his friend, words he can do, words will help him.

‘Nargggghhh,’ he says. He inwardly curses the words of English language for being fickle little bitches.

Walt looks like he wants to laugh, but his eyes are pretty dark and Ray’s read enough Jackie Collins to know where this is going, and he kind of feels like he should probably get his shit together before he lets himself pay attention to the fact that he’s at least 30% hard already and he’s pretty sure Walt is too. Okay, so not great circumstances for important admissions seeing as though the vast majority of his blood flow is not going to his brain right now, but he can improvise.

‘There’s a fucking fuck ton I wanna say to you,’ he starts, and then immediately wishes he hadn’t because, jesus that sound stupid.

‘Say it then, fucktard.’ Walt says, still smiling.

Ray scrabbles around, so unused to being on the back foot like this. He sounds retarded. Walt will never fuck him if he carries on like this. He’s reasonably sure he could convince Walt to just stay put whilst he’s goes and orders some uppers from Craigslist. He could definitely do this on Ripped Fuel.

‘Want some help?’ Walt asks, earnestly.

Ray raises his eyebrows, ‘You’re going to help me tell you my deepest, darkest, prettiest feelings?’

Walt nods. Ray feels like he’s going to vomit.

‘Okay then.’

‘Good start would be to tell me how hot I am.’

Ray lets out a breath. ‘Jesus, Walt, you’re fucking beautiful, have you ever seen yourself? You’re like a fucking Aryan sex god of-‘

‘Shut up.’

Ray shuts up. The corners of Walt’s mouth show nothing but indulgent amusement.

‘Then you tell me you wanted me here because your life has been shitty without me in it.’

‘See I sense the challenge you’re implying with that statement, and honestly dude, it cuts me deep. I spend all day eating fruit loops and loosing Black Op’s headshots to Q-Tip. Homes, it is shitty without you, it’s always shitty when you’re not there, dumbass.’

The look on Walt’s face is full of some emotion that Ray just doesn’t know how to read, but he thinks maybe it’s good. He hopes it’s good, anyway. Christ, at this point it had fucking better be.

‘Now tell me you’re glad I came and you’re going to cook me eggs tomorrow morning.’

‘Eggs? Baby, I’ll cook you whatever the hell you want, I’ll cook you soufflé, rainbow soufflé, big gay rainbow soufflé and ice cream an-‘

Walt is kissing him. Hard and fierce, like he has a point to prove and is willing to make Ray feel it by tilting the axis of his universe. He darts a tongue out to ease Ray’s lips open, and suddenly Ray realizes it’s time to get in the fucking game. He wraps one arm around Walt’s back, pulling him in, and the other hand is on his jaw, angling his head to swipe a tongue across his bottom lip and into his mouth. His movements are sure in all the ways that he’s not, he’s winging it, and it’s kind of perfect. He slides his hand from Walt’s face to curl in the hairs at the nape of his neck, and pulls just so, and when Walt makes a small note in the back of his throat, Ray swallows it greedily away and files it away for later exploration. He loses track of everything for a moment when Walt sucks at his bottom lip, lavishing it with his tongue even as he claims it as his own, but then they’re breaking away for air, and Walt is smiling and mumbling against his lips. ‘You kiss like a whore, you fuckin’ spaz.’

‘You should see what else I do like a whore,’ Ray says, and they both let out tiny huffs of laughter as Ray rests their foreheads together and strokes the hair at the back of Walt’s neck. Their eyes meet and Ray’s still kind of surprised how happy Walt looks. After all the dreams and jack-off fantasies, he can’t believe how real this feels, he’s calm and grounded in a way that he hadn’t even realized he was missing until right now. Walt’s hand slides to rest on his chest (yeah, chest. Shut up, don’t make him say it. Jesus fucking Christ, grow a pair) and Ray doesn’t really know how it happened that he gets to have this. He should probably articulate that but he doesn’t really trust himself not to fuck it up, so instead he says, ‘The first time I jacked off to the thought of you, you were 5 ft away in an RG and I swear to god I nearly came all over you just to get you back for fucking with my legendary heterosexuality.’

Walt bites his lip and pulls his hand off Ray’s waist, sneaking it up under hem of his shirt, resting it on the bare skin of his hip and squeezing hard. He moves his head minutely until their lips are almost touching, until they’re breathing the same air, and it’s hot, it’s so hot, Ray can feel it like it’s coursing through his blood stream. ‘And how is that legendary heterosexuality doing now?’

Ray swallows.

‘Well I’m not planning on jacking off alone to the thought of you tonight, but I’m still pretty fucking in to the idea of coming all over you, so I guess we can call it even.’

Walt breathes out a low ‘Jesus, Ray’ and digs his fingernails into Ray’s skin, just hard enough to make him gasp. He bends his head to Ray’s neck and scrapes his teeth along the tendon there, and Ray can’t keep his hips from canting forward. Walt replaces teeth with tongue as he sucks hard at the top of Ray’s collarbone and presses him back into the counter with his hips. He crowds Ray until there is no space between them at all, and flutters his mouth back up Ray’s neck until he stops to nip as his jaw and make his breath catch. ‘Do you know how fucking long I’ve been waiting for this, do you have any fucking idea?’ Walt mumbles against his skin. ‘That goddamn mouth of yours, that perfect fucked-up mouth, Christ. I’ve needed to taste you since Kuwait. You’re a stupid fucking hick, Joshua.’

Ray doesn’t have time to complain at the name because he’s prioritising, and right now top of his list is shoving his tongue into Walt’s mouth and staking his claim. He wraps his arms around him and fucks his tongue into Walt’s mouth, as if he could take back all those times he should have been doing this and wasn’t. He moves his hips again and Walt is as hard as he is, wants this as much as he does, and before Ray has a chance to evaluate that, Walt is bucking against him in earnest. Ray’s pretty sure it would be poor show to come in his pants, dry humping against the kitchen counter, but it’s looking increasingly likely. They break again, breathing hard, hands roaming like horny teenagers, and when Ray speaks it comes out in pants. ‘Shit Walt, I thought you were a good boy.’

‘Shut up, Ray. I’ll show you just how good I can be, if you ask nicely.’

Ray’s mouth goes dry because who the fuck could have predicted Walt being such a kinky fuck? This is more than he’d ever thought, and his senses are overloading already. He grabs at Walt’s ass, pulls him in close and thrusts hard, just to see his face as they rub together through too many layers of clothes. ‘How nicely do I have to ask for you to let me hold you down and fuck you so hard you wake the neighbours? I want to hear you, I want everyone to fucking hear you. ’

Walt groans, he actually groans, and Ray thinks it might be the hottest noise he’s ever heard. He needs skin; he pulls Walt’s t-shirt up and Walt obliges by moving his arms so that Ray can yank it over his head and off. He gives himself a moment to appreciate the fine work of the US Military for producing such jerk-off fodder, hot as shit, cut young killers as this. Thanks, tax payers.

Walt’s grabbing fistfuls of Ray’s shirt even as he smirks and says, ‘You would assume you’d be on top, wouldn’t you.’ And Ray smiles because, really, he doesn’t care. If he’s going to be a faggot there doesn’t seem much point in half measures. He won't pretend he doesn't want it.

He tweaks one of Walt’s nipples hard between his fingers and fascinates as Walt hisses at the sensation, he wants to keep him making noises like that all night, wants to organize his cesspit brain just enough to have a file marked Walt Hasser Dirty Whore Noises where he can keep them all forever. Walt continues to rut into him shamelessly, and it’s hot and rough and Ray needs more, he needs so much more. Walt must be thinking the same thing because he’s reaching for Ray’s belt, unbuckling it with hands that are steadier than anything Ray thinks he could manage right now. Walt’s already reaching to unbutton his jeans when Ray’s hands fly out to his wrists to stop him and he mumbles, ‘Bedroom. Now.’

How they manage to fumble down the hallway and up the stairs, grasping and stumbling into each other, without breaking everything Ray owns in the process, is something of a mystery, but somehow they make it to the bedroom. Despite being shirtless, Walt’s still wearing significantly too many clothes as far as Ray’s concerned. He takes a step back, and lets his gaze travel appreciatively up and down Walt’s body, before growling, ‘Hasser, take your fucking pants off.’

Walt doesn’t move immediately, and for a second Ray’s not sure if he’s read this wrong, if this isn’t the game they’re playing, but then Walt’s looking straight at him with darkened eyes and pulling his belt off. Ray trains himself on Walt’s face, breathing hard and not letting himself break the eye contact until Walt steps completely out of his pants, abandoning them forgotten on the floor. Ray can see Walt’s erection through his navy boxers, and for a moment he can do nothing but stare, before he’s moving forwards, grabbing Walt’s hips and slamming him chest against the wall, till Ray is plastered up against his back. He reaches around and cups Walt’s dick, palming it through the thin fabric and swallowing Walt’s moan with a dirty kiss. His own cock is so hard he can feel the precum beading, and he rubs it up against Walt’s ass as he continues to tease his dick. Walt moans again and pushes back against him, and Ray barely supresses a strangled groan escaping.

Walt pushes Ray off and turns, and before he knows it, Ray’s the one up against the wall, back to the peeling paint. Walt pants a low ‘You’re wearing too many fucking clothes, you asshole,’ before fisting Ray’s shirt in his hands and pulling it roughly over his head. He grabs at Ray’s wrists and holds them hard against the wall either side of Ray’s head, staring down at his bare chest and smiling a one sided smirk at the look Ray gives him. ‘You’ve let yourself go, Corporal’, he goads.

‘Fuck you, I’m fucking beautiful,’ Ray argues, not that he’s really in a state to be arguing, pinned up against his own bedroom wall by a practically naked trained killer.

Walt chuckles, low and dirty, and kisses Ray thoroughly, biting at his lower lip and tugging until he groans, releasing him and pulling back before he says, ‘I know.’ And how the fuck can he expect Ray to stay coherent? He tightens his fingers and mumbles 'Mine' against Ray's mouth.

‘Should have said something sooner, homes, we could have defiled the Humvee just for the look on Brad’s face.’

‘You’ve thought about that too?’ Walt says, and Ray sort of thinks he must be messing with him, but his pupils are blown and his fingers are digging in to the bare skin of Ray’s wrists, and shit, maybe Walt really has been thinking about this for as long as he has. He swallows hard.

Walt bends his head to bite hard at Ray’s shoulder, making his breath hitch, before Walt’s hands finally release his, moving down to undo his jeans. He raises his head and speaks against Ray’s jaw, ‘God, I've wanted this so much, thought about all the ways I want you to fucking feel me. I want you to remember this.’

Ray brings his newly freed hands to Walt’s back and drags his fingernails down, turning his head to catch Walt’s lips soft against his own. He wants to mark him, to own him, he needs Walt to know he’s wanted this too, more than anything.

‘Tell me what you’re thinking, tell me what you want,’ Walt breathes into Ray’s mouth, and Ray really doesn’t need asking twice.

‘I want to make you shake, I want you to see you fucking lose it, I want you to take what you want from me and don't you fucking dare hold back. Shit, I want, I need you on that bed in the next 5 seconds,’ he growls.

Apparently Walt’s pretty okay with taking orders as well as giving them, which makes Ray’s dick throb, because he’s moving back to lie on the bed, eyes on Ray the whole time. Ray pulls his pants off his hips and discards them in a pile, and he can hear Walt choke a little as he realizes Ray isn’t wearing any underwear, although he doesn't know why anyone could assume otherwise, he is Ray Person after all.

He clambers onto the bed, climbing over Walt and straddling his hips, bending down immediately to capture his mouth in a dirty kiss that’s all teeth and tongue. They kiss until they’re breathless and panting, hands chasing each other across skin like they’re trying to map out each nook and cranny. Ray brings his fingers to Walt’s boxers, rubbing his cock through the fabric again, and it’s cruel, he knows it’s cruel to tease like this, but Walt is making these desperate whimpering sounds and Ray just can’t bring himself to give them up yet. His mouth opens of its own accord, and he’s mumbling into Walt’s mouth, barely listening to his own words. ‘God Walt, I’ve thought about you like this so many fuckin’ times, homes. I was gonna treat you real fancy, cook you spaghetti and then suck your dick under the table. Spaghetti and blowjobs, man, that was the plan. Look you’ve gone and ruined it by jumping straight to the part where I lay you out on my bed and get you to make porno sounds.’ He moves his hands to Walt’s waist and starts pulling down his underwear, Walt facilitates by lifting his hips and kicking the boxer shorts off his legs.

It takes Ray’s brain a second to catch up with the fact that Walt is naked in his bed, that this isn’t some fucknuts Ripped Fuel fantasy that he’s going to wake up from to find himself back eating sand in the lit up remains of Mesopotamia. For a second he’s caught by the memory of Iraq, his ears ring with explosives and his peripherals blur to night vision green, he jolts like he’s falling. But then Walt’s hand is tight around his bicep, and he’s saying ‘You okay? Stay with me, Ray.’

Ray shakes his head like he’s removing water. He looks down, and Walt’s got this look on his face that might be concern, and that is so not the order of the day, so he reaches down and kisses him again, grinding his hips down until their cocks slide together, and shit, that’s what Ray’s been missing. Walt’s dick against his, the simple fucking pleasure of skin against skin like this, this is what the Middle East needs. He was wrong, he can’t believe he let Rolling Stone quote him on that pussy bullshit, this right here is what could solve aggressive foreign policy. Walt Hasser’s dick could save the world.

‘Okay that’s it,’ Walt says, and suddenly he’s flipping Ray on to his back, and really, he needs to fix this thing where Hasser keeps besting him and pinning him to stuff. Only, you know, he doesn’t really need to fix it because it’s actually super fucking hot, and Jesus Christ, Walt has nice arms, like really fucking nice arms, like, arms like that should be illegal in all the blue states, because, you know, all the red states believe in the right bear arms, ahahahaha, Ray has to make a mental note of that- ‘Ray, shut the fuck up.’

Oh. Okay, so maybe Ray had been talking out loud. Maybe his brain to mouth filter kind of left him when Walt’s pants did.

‘Stop. Fucking. Thinking.’ Walt growls out.

Ray blinks at him, ‘How the fuck am I supposed to stop thinking when you’re fucking there that like that?! See, look, like right now, what the fuck is that smile, Walt, what the fuck kind of look even is that? You’re aware that normal people, regular run of the mill hardass murderer marines don’t smirk like innocent sunshine babies, aren’t you?’ Ray pauses in his external monologue for a second when he realizes Walt is moving slowly down his body. His voice come out a couple of pitches higher than he’d like when he continues, ‘Homes, where are you going?’

Walt says nothing, just continues looking Ray straight in the eyes with his perfectly composed who-me expression.

‘Homes…. Homes!’

Walt ignores him, just bends his head to lick his way up Ray’s thigh to where it meets his crotch. He bites down at the crease there until Ray lets his head fall back on the pillow, and capitalizes on the moment by pushing Ray’s legs further apart for better access. Ray lets him.

‘Shit Walt if you think that’s gonna shut my fucking brain up you have missed some kindergarten level basics,’ Walt bites him again, and Ray knows it’s another signal to shut up, but he can’t, he really can’t, ‘All this makes me want to do is think more. Fuck, Walt, I want to fucking film you or some shit, show you how fucking good you look down there. Christ, you’re a fucking sight. No one would visit Niagra Falls ever again if they knew a fucking view like this existed. We could topple the tourism industry.’ Walt growls and digs his nails into Ray’s thighs, and fuck if that doesn’t make Ray want to come right there and then. ‘Fuuuuck, Walt.’ Ray’s mind is racing a million miles an hour.

He feels Walt’s hand on that base of his dick and raises his head in time to catch the flash of his eyes as he licks a stripe up the underside. Ray groans and wills his hips not to buck, wills his mouth to stay shut. Walt licks his lips obscenely, and Ray knows he’s making a show of it just for him. He grabs Ray’s hip hard with his free hand and takes the head of Ray’s cock in to the tight, wet heat of his mouth, and Ray finally stops thinking.

*

When he wakes up, it takes Ray a second to work out which ones his legs are. Walt is lying half on top of him, face smushed against Ray’s shoulder in a way that definitely not adorable. Shut up. Ray kind of wants to lick the messed up lines of Walt’s squashed face, and the realization that he can, that he could reach out and touch the curve of his spine if he wants to, it fills him up for a second. But this is all still new. Not fragile, not like the spun glass eggshells that Brad and Nate danced for so long, it’s never been like that with Walt. Truth be told, he doesn’t envy them that. The intensity thing that those two do, that’s great, it’s some real epic Romeo and Romeo, Ross and Rachel level crazy in love bullshit they’ve have got going. But it hurts, you know? They don’t say it but Ray can tell. Love like that always hurts.

It’s never been that way for Ray. Ray doesn’t burn like that, doesn’t want to. Ray has seen men blown apart, he’s seen a country torn to shreds under his feet, he’s felt the earth shake and a nation break, and fuck if he wants that to be what defines him. He doesn’t want a love that shatters. Being here, crushed and drooled on by this dumbass gunner with a face like sunshine and mouth like a whore, Ray is finally calm.

Ray doesn’t know how he managed to spend 22 years thinking he was straight when he can form thoughts like that. He snorts a quiet huff of laughter with the absurdity of it. Fuck, he is so fucking gay.

*

Cant marry u anymore baby, have sold my soul to Walters dick  
Ray Person to Brad Colbert, 7:41am

Congratulations, you fucking pervert. Send him my condolences  
Brad Colbert to Ray Person, 7:41am

Walt says he blames u 4 setting a poor example. We think u were contagious, u gave us the gays  
Ray Person to Brad Colbert, 7:44am

You’re welcome  
Brad Colbert to Ray Person, 7:45am

Gtg, promised my twink I wud make him eggs and suck his dick  
Ray Person to Brad Colbert, 7:45am

At the same time?  You disgusting whiskey tango faggot  
Brad Colbert to Ray Person, 7:47am

Wasn’t planning on it that way but now youve said it….  
Ray Person to Brad Colbert, 7:47am

Don’t, don’t do that, you’ll give your plaything salmonella. He’s been through enough already by letting you stick your dick up his ass  
Brad Colbert to Ray Person, 7:49am

Shhhh go away get ur own breakfast and kinky buttfucking  
Ray Person to Brad Colbert, 7:50am

I honestly fucking hate you  
Ray Person to Brad Colbert, 7:51am

BFFs 5eva, Bradley! Xoxo  
Ray Person to Brad Colbert, 7:51am


End file.
